High Sierra Topix

Has anyone here measured (altimeter or GPS or ?) or know of a measurement of the total elevation gain of the JMT?

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir_Trail" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

OK, I am not good at math, but if you start in Yosemite Valley at 4,500 feet elevation and gain 46,000 feet and loose 38,000 feet, 46,000 - 38,000 = 8,000 more gain than loss. 4,500 feet + 8,000 feet = 12,500 feet elevation. Whitney Portal is a lower than 12,500 feet elevation.

The JMT officially ends on top of Whitney, not at the Portal.

AlmostThere wrote:The JMT officially ends on top of Whitney, not at the Portal.

Hmmm,yes,but if you start at happy isles ~4000 ft and end at the top of Whitney ~14500, then overall elevation gain is 10500. So we're still missing 2500 feet.

The wikipedia entry (which I had checked before posting in the first place) is clearly flawed.

Surely somebody has actually measured it.

Summitpost has an elevation profile/graph.

maverick wrote:Summitpost has an elevation profile/graph.

Yes, thank you, but I've seen that as well as most of the obvious such graphs that show up in a google search. I'm looking for a measured value, not one estimated by looking at the map and using the major elevation changes, not one generated by plotting the route on TOPO!, and not one merely asserted without some source.

I know people who measure almost every hike with an altimeter or GPS and the JFMT has been hiked at least twenty-nine trillion times. So surely it's been done.

I plotted Yosemite Valley to Whitney Portal on TOPO! and got 47950 feet gain southbound and 43600 gain northbound. Then I asked a friend with an altimeter watch who had "sort of" walked the JMT with it. He had diverged in a couple of places so it wasn't a pure JMT, but he said that he got something around 55,000 feet gain (southbound).

I also came across a dataset from somebody's GPS on the web. It has about 20,000 elevation data points. That sounds like a lot but it works out to about one point every 50 horizontal feet of hiking or about 4 samples per minute at a normal pace. I tried to analyze this but lacking any signal processing knowledge I couldn't really make sense of it. I found I could get pretty much any number I wanted out of that data.

Total elevation gain is kind of a nebulous thing, a bit like asking how long the coastline of Norway is. But there should still be a reasonable answer. I know another friend who has both GPS and altimeter and says they tend to agree reasonably well.

we didn't do the exact JMT but the GPS recorded 47855 feet gain. Had we taken the proper route it would have been a little more due to the roller coaster along 1000 Island, Garnet and Shadow lakes we bypassed on the much smoother PCT. Our Fish valley drop and climb to Silver pass may also have shaved a few feet off the regular route, but since we did the TM to Happy Isle in both directions, there's 2604 feet uphill to offset that.

http://didnt.doit.wisc.edu/outdoor/Muir ... g2010.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My GPS includes a barometer and is calibrated - rarely are my elevations more than 20 feet off the posted elevations, which in some cases may not be accurately mapped anyway. Distances are really where GPS and maps disagree. I am convinced the JMT is at least 10 miles longer than what the maps and guide books tell you.